barn

plural barns

1. agricultureA building, often found on a farm, used for storage or keeping animals such as cattle.

   One day I was out in the barn and he drifted in. I was currying the horse and he set down on the wheelbarrow and begun to ask questions.

   1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XI, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

2. nuclear physicsA unit of surface area equal to 10⁻²⁸ square metres.
3. informalball gamesAn arena.

   Maple Leaf Gardens was a grand old barn.

4. slangA warm and cozy place, especially a bedroom; a roost.

present singular third person barns · participle present barning · participle past barned · past barned

1. transitiveTo lay up in a barn.

   But like still-pining Tantalus he sits / And useless barns the harvest of his wits

   1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC, line 859

   1 more example

   Hypocrites, in like manner, so act holiness that they pass for saints before men, whose censures often barn up the chaff, and burn up the grain.

   1645, Thomas Fuller, Good Thoughts in Bad Times; Good Thoughts in Worse Times; Mixt Contemplations in Better Times, published 1863, page 165

   Synonyms: imbarn

plural barns

1. certain Northern England dialects; otherwise obsolete; certain Northern England dialects; otherwise obsoleteA child.

   Synonyms: bairn

plural Barns

1. A diminutive of the male given names Barney, Barnabas, Barnaby, and Barnett.
2. A unisex given name transferred from the surname; diminutive of Barnard (“surname”).